Assistant Professor Angeliki Malakasioti of the Department of Audio and Visual Arts Angeliki Malakasioti, publishes book-essay "The Poetics of Melancholic Space", by Mov Skiouros Publications.
Athens, 2020
Pages 1-104
ISBN: 978–618–5476–01–4
Synopsis:
Though soul-driven, the melancholic condition contains an inherent relationship with space. The aspects, structures, functions, relations of its parts refer to a latent architectural language which is deeply rooted in the human psyche throughout the centuries. The art of melancholic space appears to emerge through intertextual references, through common places in time. These melancholy "poems", being allegorical, symbolic, conceptual constructions, do not refer to the strict spatiality of physics or mathematics, but to a kind of anthropological landscape, a landscape at the same time inconceivable and innumerable.
Following Gaston Bachelard who describes that "lived space transcends geometric space", this book seeks to transcend the comprehension of space, translating the innermost experience of melancholy into spatial conditions, qualities, and characteristics. The study of melancholy is accompanied by an architectural reading of symptomatic descriptions of the phenomenon, as manifested in excerpts from the melancholy treatise - images, poetic metaphors, symbolisms, philosophical analogies, and theoretical figures - from the past to the present. In this way an anthology of metaphorical forms is compiled that condense the spatial "poetics" of the melancholic atmosphere and its relation to the body, the building, the landscape, the city.
